Welcome to Year 4
This year, our classes at Blenheim are proudly named after celebrated poets, helping to bring poetry to life across our school and inspiring our children to enjoy the power, creativity and joy of language.
Year 4 Bloom Class is named after Valerie Bloom and is taught by Mrs Dunn and supported by Miss Curran and Miss Safa.
Year 4 Seigal Class is named after Joshua Seigal and is taught by Mr Curlett and supported by Miss Kenway.
Miss Downend and Miss Nkrumah are HLTAs who support the teaching across both Year 4 classes.
Valerie Bloom (4SD) is an award-winning poet and author who was born in Jamaica and now lives in the UK. Her poems are lively, rhythmic and full of imagination, often celebrating nature, people, language and her Jamaican heritage. She writes in both Standard English and Jamaican Creole and loves performing her poetry aloud. We are proud to have Valerie Bloom as our class poet and hope her wonderful use of words will inspire us to grow as readers, writers and poets.
Joshua Seigal (4GC) is an award-winning poet, performer and children’s author from London. His poems are funny, energetic and playful, often exploring everyday life, feelings and the wonderfully silly side of the world around us. Joshua regularly visits schools to perform his poetry and inspire children to experiment with words, rhythm and rhyme. We are excited to have Joshua Seigal as one of our class poets and hope his poems will inspire us to read, perform and write poetry of our own.
Throughout the year, children will read and explore the work of their class poet, using their poems as inspiration for their own writing and developing confidence and expression through poetry performance. This helps to enrich our poetry curriculum and gives every child opportunities to enjoy, create and perform poetry.
Our Year 4 Curriculum
We are continuing with our very successful reading curriculum which was launched in 2022 and the children will enjoy a great range of exciting and diverse books as they go through Year 4. They will continue to have 3 reading lessons every week, where they will practise their comprehension skills in discussion-rich lessons. Over the course of the year, they will be studying a wide, diverse range of fiction, poetry and non-fiction texts, exposing them to a huge range of authors, genres and writing styles and helping to build their contextual knowledge. Most importantly, we hope to foster a real enthusiasm and passion for reading, building habits that can last a lifetime!
Our writing curriculum is built around a rich range of high-quality texts, which inspire children to write for different purposes and audiences across fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Children are taught the vocabulary, grammar and sentence skills they need to craft effective writing, alongside opportunities to plan, draft, revise, edit and publish their work. Above all, we want children to see themselves as writers and develop confidence, creativity and enjoyment in writing.
Here is our Long Term Plan for 2026-27 so you can see what the children will be learning in the foundation subjects each half term.
Y4 Long Term Plan Foundation Subjects
Expectations for Y4 outside of school
HOME READING
It is vitally important that your child reads at home as well as at school.
The expectations are that your child reads AT LEAST 4 times a week at home. Reading books can be handed in on any day to be changed, but they must be handed in on a Monday, along with their reading records, signed by a parent.
We would really appreciate your support by encouraging your child to read regularly at home, and to read aloud to a parent rather than reading to themselves; this means that any mistakes in pronunciation can be corrected and that they can be supported with (and questioned about) their understanding of the text. Reading is one of the best ways to improve their academic performance - our best readers become our best writers...and they also achieve higher across the whole school curriculum.
HOMEWORK is an extremely important part of your child’s learning.
Homework is given out every Thursday and must be returned to school no later than the following Tuesday.
The homework will consist of Maths and English work to consolidate recent learning in class, Children will also be given a list of spellings to learn that will be tested on a Tuesday. Children can log onto the Emile Spelling App (using their TTRockstars password) and play games to help them practise and learn the designated spellings for the week. You will find the game codes on the Wordsearch sheet.
Times tables will be tested each week.
Several times throughout each half term, children will also have homework in the Learning Log, to further explore or consolidate learning in the foundation subjects.
Times Tables - A Crucial Year!
In Year 4, we have a statutory Times Table test due that all children will complete in June 2025. The purpose of this is to determine whether pupils can recall their times tables fluently, which is essential for future success in mathematics. You can find out more about this from this link...
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/multiplication-tables-check-development-process
To prepare our children for this, we use Times Table Rockstars. This app can be used at home on PCs, laptops, tablets and even smart phones. Your child should already know their log-in details but if you need help logging on or getting set up, please ask one of the Year 4 team. Children are expected to practise on the TTRockstars for 40 minutes each week and ensure they are very confident with their recall of all the timestables from 1-12.
PE and Swimming Kit
Both Year 4 classes have PE on a Friday afternoon.
Please make sure your child has the appropriate PE kit. Children should come to school wearing their usual uniform and change into P.E. kit before the lesson.
Your child will need:
A plain T-shirt or polo shirt
Sports shorts, tracksuit bottoms or plain leggings
Sweatshirt, hoodie or tracksuit top
Trainers suitable for outdoors
Both classes take part in swimming on a Wednesday.
Children need an appropriate swimming costume, towel and goggles. Please do not bring shampoo. Goggles should be sports-style and not large, fun style or full face masks.
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Indoor shoes are an important part of our uniform!
Please send your child with a pair of pumps or other suitable shoes to change into when inside. This protects carpets, keeps indoors clean and gives their feet a chance to dry if their shoes are wet.
Please also provide your child with a water bottle to allow them to have a drink during the day.
Water Bottles
Please ensure all children bring a water bottle to school as having a drink when thirsty is vital for health and learning, whatever the time of year.
Healthy School
Please remember that we are a HEALTHY SCHOOL and therefore children should not be bringing unhealthy snacks such as chocolate, cake or sweets into school at any time, even for birthday treats. Only healthy treats thank you (without nuts).
And finally...
We look forward to sharing this exciting year with your child, and we will try our best to make their time in Year 4 a fun and successful one!
Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or need any support.
Mrs Dunn and Mr Curlett